Florentines

I adore Florentines, they are a favourite of mine and have been since I was a little girl.   It was always such a treat to open a box.  I loved tearing thrugh the silver foil handing them round and decideding which flavour chocolate to chose, white, dark or milk?  

This week I made a couple of batches.  They went down very well served after cheese at an impromptu dinner party.  

FLORENTINES - Makes 20

Ingredients

2 egg whites, 100g icing sugar, 200g flaked almonds, 50g mixed peel diced fairly finely, 50g glace cherries diced fairly finely 

• Turn the oven to 150
• Line a baking tray with baking paper and brush lightly with vegetable oil
• Place a small bowl of cold water next to you
• Place the egg whites, icing sugar, almonds, mixed peel and cherries into a bowl and mix gently together
• Dip you hands in the bowl of water then pick up a heaped tablespoon size of the mix and place it on the baking paper.  Use a fork to spread out the little mound of mixture, I find they spread to about 6-8cm in diameter.  You want to make them as thin as possible without creating to many gaps between the almond flakes.
• Place the florentines in the oven and bake for about 12 minutes until the biscuits are golden brown.  Check underneath one biscuit to make sure they are cooked through.
• Allow to cool then gently, using a palette knife, remove the biscuits from the baking paper and serve.

Cooking notes

I use a round silver biscuit cutter that is about 6cm in diameter and spread my mixture inside it to create a circle of almonds.

I quite like these without chocolate.  If you want to cover the bottom of them in chocolate melt 200g and use a brush to spread it on the florentine.  Pop them in the fridge to allow the chocolate to harden before serving, this takes about an hour.  I melt my chocolate by using two heatproof bowls that fit inside each other.  Fill the large with a little boiling water, break up the chocolate into small pieces and place in the small bowl.  Pop the small bowl into the big bowl of water and cover both bowls with tin foil.  Leave them for 5-10 minutes until melted.  I normally do 100g of choclate at a time.

Store the florentines in an airtight container, they should last for 3-4 days

Adapting

I adapted this from Ottolenghi’s Orange an Almond recipe.  If you don’t like the fruit in the florentines then remove it and use a total of 260g of almonds and the grated zest of 1 orange instead of the fruit.